Sunday, October 30, 2011

Guilty Pleasure: Decoded

There's a show on History Channel that I really enjoy watching. It's called Decoded and features author Brad Meltzer. He mostly does some commenting through the show, but the main figures doing the investigating are an attorney, an engineer, and a journalist/historian. Every week they investigate some new historical rumor. Some of them are pretty out there, too, which is why I consider this show a guilty pleasure.

Some of the topics the show has covered that I found especially interesting were the Culper spy ring from the Revolutionary War. I'd never heard of them before, but apparently they had quite an impact on our victory in the war. Well, at least according to the show. I didn't do any research on my own.

They also looked at Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) really committed suicide or if his death was a murder. Again, after watching the show, it sure would be nice if the US Government would grant the Lewis family's request to exhume the body and let a forensic anthropologist do some work. It sure sounded like he was murdered and the evidence for suicide was flimsy at best, fabricated at worst.

The show has also covered other topics like whether or not there's still gold in Fort Knox, what happened to the corner stone of the White House, DB Cooper (the hijacker who parachuted from the 727 over the Pacific Northwest), and investigated if John Wilkes Booth really was shot after he assassinated Lincoln, or if it was another man who was killed instead.

I'll admit to being skeptical about a lot of what they choose to cover in the show and some of the theories are out there. I still find it entertaining and even if some of it is ridiculous, it's entertaining.